1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to mounting a quad including one or more sliders onto an extender, or more specifically, attaching the quad to the extender such that misalignment is mitigated.
2. Description of the Related Art
When manufacturing a hard disk drive, a single wafer may include thousands of sliders organized in rows that extend across the wafer. At one step of the process, the wafer may be diced or sawed into a plurality of quads. Generally, a quad includes one or more rows of sliders. A typical quad may include 35 rows of sliders (i.e., 35 row bars) with a total of two thousand sliders. Because of the small dimensions of the quads (e.g., a length ranging from 4-15 cm and a width ranging from a few millimeters to 1-2 centimeters), an operator mounts the quad onto an extender using an adhesive to improve the quad's portability and durability. The extender provides mechanical support to the quad during further processing steps such as transporting the quad or performing tests on the individual sliders.
However, quads that contain small number of row bars (e.g., five row bars or less) may be mounted to extenders using a manual process that increases the risk of misalignment between quad and the extender. Specifically, the manual process may result in misalignment where the side of the quad facing the extender does not align with the contacting surface of the extender. This misalignment may negatively affect later processing steps performed on the sliders in the quad.